IT managers expect stronger investment, hiring in second half of 2010, CDW survey says

The IT sector may finally be pulling out of its doldrums and getting ready to start hiring again, a new survey suggests.

Some 48 percent of CIOs and other executives in charge of IT purchasing interviewed for the latest CDW IT Monitor report expect to see their budgets to increase in the next six months, Vernon Hills, Ill.-based computer and IT firm CDW reports. That's up 10 percentage points from a year earlier.

In terms of hiring, 37 percent of those representing large companies expect to add new IT staff in the second half of the year, compared to just 26 percent who expressed that sentiment the previous year. In the federal government, 29 percent of IT decisionmakers believe they will hire additional staff before the end of 2010. In an April CDW survey, just 20 percent said they would add staff in the near future.

Nearly 75 percent of the entire survey pool expect to install or replace software in the second half of the year, and 68 percent say they will spend money on new hardware before 2010 ends.

"Despite recent economic volatility, many IT decision makers have remained cautiously optimistic about budgets and anticipated IT investment," Thomas E. Richards, CDW's president and COO, says in a press release. "As we head into the second half of the year, that optimism is beginning to extend to IT hiring expectations in some sectors. While this positive IT job outlook is still emerging and hasn't yet translated across all sectors of the IT marketplace, it remains an encouraging indicator of future growth."

The CDW doesn't break down results by industry, but it's a good bet the healthcare IT sector is more optimistic than the general survey pool, thanks in no small part to the $27 billion federal stimulus for EMRs that starts in a matter of months.

For further details:
- take a look at this Healthcare IT News story
- view this CDW data chart (.pdf)
- see this CDW press release

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